Obituary Lloyd Snyder

Obituary Lloyd Snyder

On the 20th September 218 Dr Lloyd Snyder passed awayat the age of 87. He was a true giant in the field of separation science and will be greatly missed.Dr Snyder received The Chromatographic Society Martin Medal in 1986 for his numerous pioneering contributions to separation science.

Snyder was born in 1931 and was a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley in San Francisco where he undertook his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in chemistry (1952 and 1954 respectively). Upon graduatinghe worked for Shell (Houston), the Union Oil Company (Brea) and Technicon Instrument Corporation (New York), before setting up his own company LC Resources with John Dolan in 1984 (Orinda). Snyder’s principal interests were focused on the areas of liquid chromatography and clinical chemistry.He made significant developments in petroleum analysis (improving the understanding of the chromatographic limits of peak capacity) and the theory of retention in adsorption and partition chromatography. Snyder’s vast body of work was distinctive in that it was characterized by the way in which it not only expanded theoretical understanding of the science but also always had direct industrial application (“Chromatographic knowledge that cannot be applied directly or used elsewhere is of little value” [1]).

Amongst many, some of his most important contributions to the field were:

The Hydrophobic Subtraction Model for characterisation of reversed-phase column selectivity [7,8](which is available as an on-line tool through the USP website [9]).

Dr Snyder, often in collaboration with other notable names in the field, was also the author of several important, indeed classic, texts on liquid chromatography. These books included An Introduction to Separation Science[10],Introduction to Modern Liquid Chromatography[11], Practical HPLC Method Development[12], High Performance Gradient Elution[4] and Troubleshooting LC Systems[13].

He was also well known in the US for his teaching activities – particularly his courseson liquid chromatography (taught alongside the late Jack Kirkland) for the American Chemical Society from 1971 – 1993.Dr Snyder was still active in chromatography up to his passing – working closely with Dr Dwight Stoll on column characterisation.